Bring the marinade ingredients to a boil. Remove from heat. Marinade the chicken pieces in the sauce for one hour. Grill the chicken, basting frequently with the marinade.

You can grill the chicken till it’s done and serve it immediately, but there’s something you can do that will make the chicken even better. When the chicken is grilled well on both sides (it doesn’t have to be finished clear through), put it into a crock pot with a little of the marinade and cook it in there for at least an hour or until you want to serve it. This causes the flavors to meld together and the chicken is super tender and absolutely delicious. The temperature of the crock pot depends on how soon you want to serve the chicken and how nearly finished it is when taking it off the grill. Enjoy!

This month I’ll tell you how to grill pasture raised lamb chops. They are super easy. You just need to know a very important tip. Don’t overcook them or they will be tough. I recently took some shoulder chops that our son Nathan sells and sprinkled season salt, onion powder and garlic powder on both sides of the chops. Then I put them on the grill. I didn’t want the meat rare, but with just a tinge of pink in the center. When I pulled them off the grill, they were fabulous! They were tender and juicy and, oh, the flavor!

Our son, Nathan, has lamb available for you, too. It has a delicious lamb flavor without any gamey taste. Summer is a great time to use the grill. We have lamb loin chops, rib chops and shoulder chops. The lambs ate only milk from the ewes and grass. Just remember when you grill that you don’t want to cook the chops well done plus a little longer or they will be tough. If you find that you have done them too long, you can remedy the situation by putting the chops into the crockpot several hours or baking them in the oven in a covered dish with a little moisture at 325 degrees for 45 minutes or until they’re soft. They are great that way too.

I intentionally make extra food when I prepare meals so that I have leftovers. That way I don’t need to prepare everything from scratch to prepare more meals. So what can you do with the leftover chicken and rice? Here are some ideas:

When you have eaten all the chicken and rice you want, take the rest of the chicken off the bones (A large chicken is great for more meat for leftovers). Put the bones back into the crockpot to make bone broth. Add a tablespoon of vinegar, an onion, a carrot, and a stalk of celery. A couple chicken feet would be good, too. Cover with water and add salt to taste. Cook on low for 12 to 24 hours. This makes a nutritious, high calcium broth that you can use to cook more rice, noodles, veggies, etc.

Ideas How to Use the Leftover Chicken and Rice

In any cookbook that has main dishes, you will find recipes that include cut up chicken. Here are some ideas:

Chicken Soup. Cut up the chicken into bite sized pieces and put into a pan. Add the rice and enough water to make the soup the consistency you want. Or you could use the bone broth you cooked instead of the water. If desired, add veggies like chopped spinach or kale, peas, diced carrots, onion, etc. This is super easy and delicious.

Chicken and Rice Casserole (the second time). Combine the cut up chicken and rice in a baking dish. Cover and heat 30 minutes to an hour at 350 degrees till hot. You could also heat the chicken and rice in a skillet in a little butter or coconut oil instead of in a baking dish.

Chicken Salad. Add a little mayo and sour cream to the chicken along with some finely diced celery and onion. A little curry powder added gives some extra pizazz. This is great in a sandwich or on a bed of lettuce.

Chicken Enchiladas. Make a mixture of cut up chicken, cheese, sour cream and chilies to your taste. Spoon mixture into the middle of tortillas and place seam side down in a baking dish. Top with a white sauce or salsa . Bake 45 to 60 minutes in a 350 degree oven or till hot. At the end, top with cheese and melt in oven. Serve with sour cream and salsa or guacamole.

Add your favorite Bbq sauce to the cut up chicken and heat. Use for a baked potato topping or put into a bun.

Chicken can be added to any veggie salad.

With the bone broth and chicken, make a gravy to go on biscuits, mashed potatoes or rice.

For breakfast, place a fried egg on a piece of toast. Top with chicken gravy. If you add a little mayo to the gravy, it adds interest to the dish.

For a one-dish meal, stir fry some veggies with the chicken. Serve over rice or couscous.

Add chicken, cheese and salsa and any vegetable you want to an omelet or scrambled eggs.

Chicken Pizza. Top a pizza crust with chicken and all your favorite toppings.

Chicken Gyro. Inside a gyro style pita bread, place cut up chicken, shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes, a little cucumber and some shredded cheese. Top with the salad dressing of your choice.

Use your creativity. Think about what foods you’re hungry for. Try them with chicken. Add some spices or sauces that sound good to you. Taste the food and adjust. You may come up with a new favorite dish. When it comes to cooking, creativity truly is the spice of life. Have fun!

At age 26, I am a member of the Millennial generation. Like many other Millennials, I am busy. I don’t have a lot of cooking skills. I do want to eat healthy, and I don’t just want a TV dinner or a frozen pizza.

Fortunately, most of the time, I don’t have to cook. The three ladies of our home do a very excellent job of making hearty, healthy meals for our family. However, when Dad, Mom and the girls took a trip and left us guys to fend for ourselves in the kitchen, I got the job of seeing that my brothers had something to eat. Luckily, Mom left a menu with cooking directions for me to follow. Most of it was pretty simple, like wrapping egg burritos in parchment paper and tinfoil and sticking them in the oven. (Except that, after wrapping the burritos, I discovered that I needed another 35-45 minutes to heat them in the oven, so I stuck the burritos in the fridge till the next day.)

When Sunday rolled around, it would be my job to make a big Sunday dinner for four guys. Saturday night, I looked at my menu:

Get chicken out of freezer to thaw overnight.

The next morning, after caring for the laying hens, I prepared to make Sunday lunch. The menu stated:

Put 2 cups rice in deep casserole dish.

I finally managed to find a dish that would hold the 4 1/2 lb chicken and the rice, and added 2 cups of rice.

I discovered that the onion powder had disappeared (it had gone on vacation with the rest of the family). I substituted minced onion, but I probably should have just skipped it altogether. Oh, well.

Place on rice.

Oops. The chicken was already in the dish. (Moral of the story: read all directions carefully before proceeding.)

Cover dish. Heat at 325o for 3 hours.

I turned the oven on and slid the casserole dish into the oven. Done! Only about 30 minutes (including 10 minutes spent trying to track down the dish, plus 5 minutes trying to find a photographer).

At lunchtime, I heated up a jar of homegrown green beans and pulled the chicken out of the oven.

It was, if I may say so myself, delicious. Without a whole lot of time in the kitchen, we enjoyed a hearty Sunday dinner, and had leftover chicken and rice to enjoy at a later date. Despite having raised chickens for 15 years, it was the first time I can remember roasting a chicken myself, and I was amazed at how easy it was. If I can do it, anyone can!

Want to try the recipe yourself? Here it is:

Chicken and Rice

Put 2 cups of brown rice in a deep casserole dish. Add 4 cups of water and sprinkle on Lawry’s salt.

Take heart, liver and neck out of the chicken. Cut off the flap of skin holding the legs of the chicken. Sprinkle the chicken with Lawry’s salt, onion powder, garlic powder, and paprika. (If you have other spices you would like to use, feel free to add or substitute them.)

In the last newsletter I wrote, “If you know of something to wrap the burritos in other than foil to heat them to go, I’d love to hear from you. I like to use as little foil as possible because of aluminum’s implication in Alzheimer’s.” I received several replies suggesting I use parchment paper. Thank you! I thought maybe the rest of you would like to know, too.

Speaking of those wonderful eggs, I decided to put my basic quiche recipe in this newsletter. I would say it is probably our family’s favorite way to eat eggs. It is a never-fail recipe with its silky texture and savory flavor. This is also a great way to use leftovers. It is a great main dish for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

In the bottom of the pie crust, layer the meat, then the veggies of your choice and top with the shredded cheese. In a mixing bowl mix together the eggs, mustard, salt and pepper. Add the cream and mix. (A stick blender works beautifully.) Pour into the pie crust over all. Bake 15 minutes at 425 degrees. Then reduce oven temperature to 300 degrees and bake 30-35 minutes more until knife comes out clean when inserted in center. Let stand 10 minutes before cutting. Serves 6. Enjoy!

Maybe you have a favorite egg recipe you’d like to share. I’d love to hear from you!

By Ross Mohan
Note: Ross has been a customer of ours for many years. Last Thanksgiving, he decided to try cooking a turkey for the first time ever. Afterwards, he sent us the following email about his experience. He humorously highlights the trials of trying to sort through the many methods of turkey cooking, things that many of you who cook can identify with.

Dear Cathy, Myron and Horst Family,

We had a lovely Thanksgiving and hope you did as well.

Our special meal was superb, in no small part thanks to the superb quality of the turkey you raised and sold us.

Having never cooked a turkey before (yes, really — I’ve always been a spectator ’til now) I did everything I could to ruin the bird.

Finally, the next morning, it came to be 11am on Thanksgiving Day, the time of day for when — for a 16 lb. bird — the proverbial rubber meets the road. I had no plan. My anxiety radiated so powerfully the kitchen fluorescent lights were flickering.

I shuddered, my eyes rolled up into my head, and I think I might have even blanked out and then somehow I got the poor bird into the oven. Unbrined. Uncovered. Unstuffed. (I did manage to spill a variety of spices and some oil haphazardly on the surface, but only in an effort to minimize ease of later handling.)

Yet, I was not done with my subversive efforts.

As my wife and mother-in-law toiled away at lasagna, tabouleh, soups, pies, stuffed grape leaves and Waldorf salad (a family favorite of my own mother’s…) I managed to poke that poor bird in the oven with a meat thermometer like a madman no less than a dozen times starting at 15 minutes into the roast. By the time I was done, it looked like a pincushion.

I don’t know how or why — but due certainly to my boundless culinary expertise — I detected that the bird was “done” after approximately two hours of cooking. Clearly impossible, so I denied the evidence of my lying eyes (and my handy meat thermometer) and kept cooking it for another hour.

I’ll spare you the details of the carving except to say that it involved my mother-in-law actually arm-wrestling at the dining table with the drumstick. (And losing.) So, how did this bird come out, really?

In all seriousness, it was….a miracle.

Everything was cooked perfectly. The light, the dark, and everything in between. The skin was golden and fragrant, the meat was beyond moist, the steam rose fragrantly and languorously from the plate and the “oohs” and “aahs” started early and did not cease. My wife and I received compliments such as “this is the best turkey I have ever had” and “I have never had such moist and flavorful meat” and “we are so impressed with your kitchen skills.”

Now, all kidding strictly aside, this result had very little indeed to do with my cooking, and nearly everything to do with the quality of what you folks do up there in Dickerson. We salute you and thank you.

We’ve been eating this turkey for days in soups, curries, sandwiches and salads, and it remains delicious. I simply wanted to write and say “Thank You” one and all for your hard work and for allowing Providence to warm our kitchen and table this season.